So what did you do this weekend? I spent Saturday afternoon basking/cooking in the sun and taking in the tunes on an island in the mouth of the St Lawrence River at the ninth annual Wolfe Island Musicfest. Set in the outfield of a baseball diamond in the tiny town of Marysville on the largest of the 1,000 Islands in Kingston, Ontario, it’s a small festival that’s grown larger in recent years as its reputation for hosting top independent Canadian talent in an exceedingly comfortable and casual setting has spread. This year there were more than a few comments about how big it had gotten but ou could have easily scooped up all the patrons and dropped them into a medium-large club and still had room to dance.

Better time than expected was made getting out of Toronto and up to Kingston but when we got to the festival site, things were inexplicably running almost an hour ahead of schedule and so Spiral Beach was finishing when they should have been starting and I barely caught one song. I had wanted to see them – it’d been well over a year since I saw them last and for a band as young as they, that’s an eternity, but this time it wasn’t t be. I did note they were much blonder than they were before, though.

Photos: Spiral Beach @ Wolfe Island Music Fest – August 11, 2007
MP3: Spiral Beach – “New Clouds”
MP3: Spiral Beach – “Voodoo”

So things essentially got started with a familiar face, Ms Basia Bulat. Somehow, her band was even greater in number than at Hillside, boasting ten members at points – at this rate, she’ll soon not be referred to as orch-pop but as a straight-up orchestra. This was the fourth time I’d seen her play this year so I’m plum out of new ways to talk about her show so I’ll just say that I expected her and her band to be terrific and they were. Always a pleasure. Her album Oh My Darling is out on September 18 and she plays a double-header record release party at the Music Gallery on September 22.

Photos: Basia Bulat @ Wolfe Island Music Fest – August 11, 2007
MP3: Basia Bulat – “Snakes & Ladders”
MySpace: Basia Bulat

Born Ruffians seem to occupy their own distinctive musical cosmos of hiccupping, yodeled vocals and odd rhythms that alternately lurch and tippy-toe along but the longer I spend there, the more natural it feels. Still immensely odd, but comfortable. Their generally amiable and goofy demeanor suited the vibe of the day really well and they gained the distinction of getting the audience on their feet far earlier in the day than I’d have expected. Their debut full-length album is due out early next year and a couple of the new tracks sounded pretty impressive.

Photos: Born Ruffians @ Wolfe Island Music Fest – August 11, 2007
MP3: Born Ruffians – “Hedonistic Me”
MP3: Born Ruffians – “I’m Not One Of Those Girls”
MySpace: Born Ruffians

Weeping Tile! For all the merits of the rest of the festival lineup, they were the main reason I made the trek up to Kingston (I detailed my love for the band here). Sarah Harmer, for all her success as a AOR folkie (not meant as a slight – I like her solo work), can still rock it out and looked perfectly natural with the beat up Telecaster or even behind the drum kit for their set-closing cover of Guided By Voices’ “Game Of Pricks”. All of the old gems sounded great and I was especially thrilled that “The Room With The Sir John A View” got aired – one of my all-time favourites. That the band makes a point of saying there are no plans for any sort of full-on reunion is both a shame and a relief – it makes events like this that much more special though I’d be happy if they happened just a little more frequently and maybe not just here in their hometown. But a suggestion to Ms Harmer, if I may? When you head back into the studio to record the follow-up to I’m A Mountain? Bring the Telecaster. Just in case.

Photos: Weeping Tile @ Wolfe Island Music Fest – August 11, 2007
MP3: Weeping Tile – “Au Sud De Moi”

By this time, the organizers had shuffled and stretched the schedule to try and get back onto the originally posted set times so that people didn’t miss whomever they were arriving to see. It was a little too effective as by night’s end they were an hour behind, meaning that somewhere, somehow, they actually lost two hours, but really – having extra time to kill wasn’t going to be any kind of issue with Apostle Of Hustle coming up to bat. I suspect they’ve never seen a set time they couldn’t jam into oblivion. While their first full-length Folkloric Feel didn’t do much for me, the stuff I’ve heard from National Anthem Of Nowhere has been pretty good, particularly the title track. The first portion of their set was actually really impressive, serving as a reminder of how good a guitarist Andrew Whiteman is and how tight the band is. After a while, though, the jamminess of it all got a bit much to take and I went to lie down and watch the sun set.

Photos: Apostle Of Hustle @ Wolfe Island Music Fest – August 11, 2007
Video: Apostle Of Hustle – “National Anthem Of Nowhere” (YouTube)
MySpace: Apostle Of Hustle

As a general rule, electronic acts are either stupefyingly dull live or stupefyingly awesome. Holy Fuck are the latter. Playing with a live rhythm section, Holy Fuckers Brian Borcherdt and Graham Walsh dived right into their work, playing their arsenal of keyboards and effects pedals in real-time like DJs on decks. No pressing “play” on laptops and queuing up the Frecell here, thank you very much. Holy Fuck were about dancing – themselves, the crowd, even the other performers (Sarah Harmer and members of Basia Bulat’s band were onstage dancing up a storm by the set’s close). Having not really listened to their studio recordings, I’m curious to see if they can translate the energy and excitement of their live performance to record. Their new full-length will be released on October 23, I’ll find out then.

Photos: Holy Fuck @ Wolfe Island Music Fest – August 11, 2007
MySpace: Holy Fuck

The delightful synchronicity of having Wolf Parade play Wolfe Island is self-evident, so I’ll skip that. Instead, I’ll say that I’ve never been into Wolf Parade but that’s based on one live show (which I actually rather enjoyed) and the impression that I couldn’t take the vocals in the band. Well it seems that’s no longer as much an issue as I thought it was because their headlining set to close out the fest was pretty damned impressive. Claiming it to be their first show in some ten months, they used the opportunity to air out a goodly number of new songs though I wouldn’t have been able to tell since I don’t know the old songs (though I assume the ones that got the biggest cheers were the old ones). All of it sounded urgent, rich and ragged and most importantly, so very rocking and the vocals? Didn’t really bother me at all. I think that maybe I’ve grown, just a little. The audience went nuts, the otherwise sleepy little town of Marysville apparently had no curfew (they wrapped up a good hour later than originally intended) and I left a bit early to catch the ferry back to the mainland, fully intending to pick up a copy of Apologies To The Queen Mary at the earliest opportunity. I would call that the perfect cap to great day of music.

Photos: Wolf Parade @ Wolfe Island Music Fest – August 11, 2007
MP3: Wolf Parade – “My Father’s Son”
MP3: Wolf Parade – “Shine A Light”
Video: Wolf Parade – “I’ll Believe In Anything” (MOV)
MySpace: Wolf Parade

As mentioned, the Wolfe Island experience was so casual and enjoyable, it was more like a day in the park (which technically it was) with bands playing rather than a music festival in the conventional sense. Though it would have been nice to have some of the amenities of the larger fests – free tap water or a better than 1-to-100 portapottie-to-patron ratio – it was a minor quibble (that’s why they have shrubbery, after all) and a fine second stop in my Summer of local-ish, laid back festivals (Hillside was stop one, Dog Day Afternoon next weekend will cap things off). Radio Free Canuckistan, whom I thank heartily for shuttling me to Kingston and back, has posted his review of the day.

A moment of silence, please, for Factory Records impresario and all-around, larger-than-life figure Tony Wilson who passed away yesterday after a battle with cancer. Obituaries and eulogies are plentiful and NME has rememberences from Creation Records founder Alan McGee, Factory Records graphic designer Peter Saville and Bernard Sumner, Stephen Morris and Peter Hook of Joy Division and New Order. Cheers, Tony.

Spinner interfaces with Spoon.

The Advocate talks to Jason Isbell.

John Darnielle of The Mountain Goats writes at the new Beggars Banquet blog about making a zombie-riffic video for the song he recorded with Aesop Rock for the rapper’s new album None Shall Pass, out August 28. Darnielle is heading back into the studio to work on the next Goats record but will also be hitting the road this Fall, stopping in at Lee’s Palace on September 25.

And speaking of videos, The Shins have a new one for “Turn On Me”.

MySpace: The Shins – “Turn On Me” (MySpace)

The Go! Team will release their second album Proof Of Youth on September 11 and will be in town on October 31 for a show at the Opera House, tickets for which will run $18.50. Check out the first single and the first two vids from the record – the MP3 is a big download, but when the label gives me 256 kbps, I give you 256 kbps.

MP3: The Go! Team – “Grip Like A Vice”
Video: The Go! Team – “Grip Like A Vice” (YouTube)
Video: The Go! Team – “Doing It Right” (YouTube)

Swedes Shout Out Louds are also releasing their sophomore effort Our Ill Wills on September 11. They’ve also just announced a Fall tour that brings them to the Mod Club on October 22. See and hear the first single from the new record below:

MP3: Shout Out Louds – “Tonight I Have To Leave It”
Video: Shout Out Louds – “Tonight I Have To Leave It” (MOV)

And some other shows just announced – We Are Scientists are at Lee’s on September 6 ($16), Miracle Fortress have a show at the Drake Underground on September 11 and Basia Bulat will play not one but two CD release shows for Oh My Darling, out September 18, at the Music Gallery on September 22, an early and a late. Tickets for each show are $10.50.

And I’ll be seeing Ms Bulat again today in Kingston at the Wolfe Island Music Fest not two weeks after seeing her in Guelph at Hillside. Stylus has finished their writeup of the fest and Radio Free Canuckistan has also posted his recollections, these from the point of view of emcee.

Hi and welcome to the final stop of John Vanderslice’s “Live From Tiny Telephone” online tour. As mentioned last week, The ‘Slice has been making the rounds around the Blogosphere with videos of him performing his new album Emerald City from his studios back in May, one song per site. You can find the first eight songs at the following splendid and exotic locales:

Stereogum – “Kookabura”
Gorilla Vs Bear – “White Dove”
BrooklynVegan – “The Tower”
You Ain’t No Picasso – “The Parade”
My Old Kentucky Blog – “Time To Go”
SixEyes – “Numbered Lithograph”
The Catbirdseat – “Central Booking”
An Aquarium Drunkard – “Tablespoon Of Codeine”

and here, the final song of the tour, “The Minaret”.

And a final, tour-ending message from Mr Vanderslice:

So this is the last stop on the Emerald City Online Tour.
I’m very happy we’re here with Chromewaves.
I want to give a huge thanks to all the blogs hosting
the videos. See you in a few weeks on the van tour!
JV

Also note that Catbirdseat and SixEyes have interviews with Vanderslice appended to their videos – the SixEyes one is in two parts, the second of which is here. An Aquarium Drunkard also has some videos of Vanderslice playing a show in the LA river basin. No, that’s not a venue, it’s a river basin. Synthesis also has an interview. He’s doing a proper in-the-flesh this Fall and will be at the Horseshoe in Toronto on October 1.

MP3: John Vanderslice – “White Dove”
Video: John Vanderslice – “Time To Go” (MOV)
Stream: John Vanderslice / Emerald City
MySpace: John Vanderslice

Idlewild will celebrate their tenth anniversary with the release of Scottish Fiction: Best Of 1997-2007 on October 1. It will collect material from their Captain mini-album through this year’s Make Another World and throw in a DVD with three hours of footage including a complete show in Aberdeen, all their videos and unseen documentary footage.

Goldenfiddle has the tracklisting for the soundtrack to Todd Haynes’ I’m Not There Dylan biopic and it’s as insanely indie-all-star-studded as promised. The film debuts next month at the Toronto International Film Festival.

Gogol Bordello are at the Opera House on October 9. That is going to be fifteen kinds of crazy. Tickets go on sale tomorrow at 10AM, not sure how much.

Mike Cooley of Drive-By Truckers discusses “Gravity’s Gone” off of A Blessing And A Curse with Independent Weekly.

Filter rounds up all the upcoming Robyn Hitchcock retrospective action coming up, starting with the I Wanna Go Backwards box set, due out October 16.

CBC wonders if the concept of an album release date is still relevant.

Welsh ragamuffin collective Los Campesinos! have had a festival-filled Summer of 2007, what with playing Glastonbury in their native UK last month and Hillside and Lollapalooza more locally and recently, so a cozy, free show at the Horseshoe on Tuesday night almost certainly qualified as a change of scenery. Based on the profile of their recent shows and their signing to local powerhouse label Arts & Crafts in North America, the curious were out in full force to see what the hubub was about, but before that they had to get through the Germans.

Hailing not from the Rhineland but right here in Hogtown, Germans recall the glory days of college rock – that’d be the early ’90s – blending the angular pop of Pavement with the hollered punk of early Superchunk and the noise squalls of Sonic Youth. Striking a near-perfect balance between undeniable melodic hookiness and discordant, in your face abrasiveness, they’re like a frosted mini wheat of indie rock goodness. Constantly swapping instruments as well as passing around parts of a second drum kit (which wasn’t superfluous at all but added huge weight to their sound), the six Germans showcased a lot of material from last year’s Cape Fear full-length and just generally rocked the house in, dare I say, blitzkrieg style? Wholly impressive. Do not fear these Germans. They’re playing a double-header on Saturday, playing the ALL CAPS! outdoor party in Dufferin Park in the afternoon (eye has more info) and the Mod Club that evening opening up for The Wombats . And also check out the video for “I Am The Teacher” below – also the awesome.

It’s easy to have preconceptions about what a seven-piece, co-ed band of youngsters whose band name includes a mandatory exclamation mark and who, furthermore, have all taken on said exclamation as their surname sounds like. And in Los Camposinos!’ case, those broad strokes are fairly bang on but don’t tell the whole story. Yes, they’re ridiculously cute and energetic and their sound is awash in instrumentation, shoutalongs and hand claps, but beneath the surface it’s not at all random or chaotic – I was pretty impressed at how tight and meticulously arranged all the parts and vocals in their songs were. There is a real method and skill to their madness. Lead Campesino! Gareth’s voice and singing style is a little too frantic and histrionic for my tastes and reminds me more than a bit of Kevin Barnes but that’s me – those attributes might well sell him to someone else.

With only a six-song EP to their name, the band presumably interjected some new material amidst the songs from Sticking Fingers Into Sockets, a Pavement cover and profuse thanks to everyone in attendance for showing up. Regardless of how you feel about their style of sugar-buzz, kitchen sink pop – and I’m a little worn out on the style, nothing personal – it was hard to dislike these kids, so cute, bright-eyed and earnest they were. But I suspect they’re best enjoyed in EP-sized dose -a full-length might well be too hazardous to someone’s health.

NOW asks five questions of bassist Ellen Campesino! and Chart chats with guitarist Neil. eye also has a review of the show.

Photos: Los Campesinos!, Germans @ The Horseshoe – August 7, 2007
MP3: Los Campesinos! – “Don’t Tell Me To Do The Maths”
MP3: Los Campesinos! – “We Throw Parties, You Throw Knives”
MP3: Germans – “I Am The Teacher”
MP3: Germans – “Tiger Vacuum Bottle”
Video: Los Campesinos! – “We Throw Parties, You Throw Knives” (YouTube)
Video: Los Campesinos! – “You! Me! Dancing!” (YouTube)
Video: Germans – “I Am The Teacher” (YouTube)
MySpace: Los Campesinos!
MySpace: Germans

NPR has got a World Cafe session with Great Lake Swimmers available to stream. Chart also reports that the band is soliciting travel video clips from fans for use in a video for the band’s “Passenger Song”, the next single from Ongiara. They’re back home for a show at the Phoenix on September 29 with Ohbijou as support. The Toronto Star has a profile of Ohbijou, who are playing a free show at Harbourfront Centre tomorrow night.

Denver Westword asks Jason Isbell about leaving Drive-By Truckers. Jason Isbell answers. NPR has got a World Cafe session with Isbell available too. They’re everywhere, those NPR folks.

The Winnipeg Sun talks to Nels Cline of Wilco. Cline will be in Guelph doing the solo thing at their jazz festival on September 8.

Pitchfork parses the press release for Jens Lekman’s forthcoming Night Falls Over Kortadela, out September 5 in Europe and October 9 in North America.

eye says “hey, whassup” to Au Revoir Simone, in town at Lee’s Palace on August 15.

Shows? Sure. Marissa Nadler’s September 7 show has been moved from the Tranzac to Sneaky Dee’s and will no longer be an early gig. Booking issues, dontcha know. Also, Carolyn Mark is at the Tranzac on September 28, Regina Spektor is in town for a show at the Kool Haus on October 11, electronic act UNKLE tries to translate to a live performance October 19 at Lee’s Palace, Enon at Sneaky Dee’s on October 22 and Portland’s Thermals are at the Horseshoe on October 27.

The AV Club talks to Buffy-meister Joss Whedon about making the shift from screenwriter to comics scribe and Buffy season eight.

Anyone need or got a lift to Kingston for Wolfe Island this weekend? Drop me a line.

When David Lewis Gedge announced in Fall of 2004 that he was resurrecting The Wedding Present moniker, there was a great outcry of happiness from the huddled masses. It made good press, after all, what with one of the more beloved heroes of 80s British indie rock returning to the scene (and this was before the current onslaught of reunion fever). But it wasn’t as though Gedge had pulled a Kevin Shields and gone into hiding – he’d been happily turning out the same brand of wrecked romantic guitar pop that he made the Wedding Present name with under another identity for the past eight odd years. Cinerama.

Founded in 1998 with girlfriend Sally Murrell, Cinerama was intended to be a stylistic departure from the frantic guitar rock that the Wedding Present was identified with, an homage to the film soundtrackish Euro-pop implied by their name (never mind that the last few Wedding Present records were considerably smoother than their stereotyped sound). And the debut release Va Va Voom did this well – the arrangements were lusher and more orchestral and could well have provided the score for technicolor afternoons at the cinema… providing the films were about the lovelorn and scorned. Because despite the new musical clothes, Gedge’s pen remained the same. Consider the opening lyrics from “Maniac” – ” And when i made that stupid oath/About how i was going to/Pay for someone to kill you both…” Cheery.

But even as early as the second album, Disco Volante, cracks in the new aesthetic began to show and the sweeping string arrangements stood alongside churning electric guitars taken straight out of Seamonsters (thanks in no small part to production help from Steve Albini). Wedding Present songs also began creeping into the live sets and any pretense that the two bands were distinct entities began to melt away. By 2002, Gedge was back into full-on rock mode and Torino ended up one of my favourite releases of the year.

So back to 2004 and the announcement that the next album, Take Fountain, would be released by the Wedding Present. Though differences in the bands was mostly academic by this point, there was a further symbolic reason for the identity shift – Gedge and Murrell had split the year before and that break-up weighed heavily on the new material. Releasing it as the project the two had started together would have been more than a bit uncomfortable and anyways, The Wedding Present was much more marketable, as the heavy touring across Europe and North America to support confirmed.

Since then, The Wedding Present has been celebrating accomplishments past with the George Best 20th anniversary tour, retracing the steps of the tour to promote their debut two decades ago and releasing the expansive, six-disc The Complete Peel Sessions. But the Cinerama years aren’t being ignored – long a favourite of the late, legendary DJ John Peel, Gedge and co continued to visit the BBC studios and record sessions in the Cinerama guise. Two volumes of these sessions have already been released and third, The Peel Sessions Season Three: Cinerama Holiday, will be coming out on August 20. All three discs will also be collected in a box set entitled The John Peel Cinerama Sessions, out the same day.

I’m perhaps more partial than most to the Cinerama years, mainly because they were my first introduction to the works of the Gedge – not the Wedding Present – and while it’s great that the Wedding Present vaults are getting the attention they deserve, I was a little afraid that Cinerama was being disavowed a bit. The first two Cinerama albums both essentially came with two companion albums each – a b-sides compilation and the Peel sessions disc. Let it never be said that fans were left wanting for material. The release of the Torino-era Peel sessions gives me hope that the singles and b-sides from that era will also be collected and released soon. Fingers crossed.

I can’t find any Cinerama MP3s and hardly any videos on YouTube, so I’ll have to make do with some mp3s and clips from Take Fountain, which technically was supposed to be the fourth Cinerama album…

MP3: The Wedding Present – “Interstate 5”
Video: Cinerama – “Careless” (YouTube)
Video: The Wedding Present – “I’m From Further North Than You” (YouTube)
MySpace: Cinerama

The Futurist has some tracks from a recent WOXY session by Dirty On Purpose available to download. They also mention a new EP will be out this Fall, just in time for their tour with Fujiya & Miyagi, which brings them to Lee’s Palace on October 3.

DCist caught a few words with Spoon at this weekend’s V Fest in Baltimore.

The Veils are at the El Mocambo September 5.

Newsarama has an interview with the creators of Phonogram, the Britpop-centric comic I mentioned in the first post of the year. It turned out to be quite a good read, with a real fondness for the era but no excessive nostalgia… and anything that slams Kula Shaker is okay in my books. The trade paperback is already out and there are plans for a second series sometime in the future. Noise To Signal has also got an interview with the writer and artist.